3d Modeling: Dragon

So I started working on a dragon for my story, and because it's a fun modeling attempt. It's looking decent so far. I'm pretty happy with the head, though the horn looks a little strange. The body is still a work in progress, and I havent' started on the wings / legs yet, because they're pretty tricky to get off the ground. The little weird spot on the back is where I've set it up for the wings to come out of. Looks a little different than when I'm editing it, but hopefully it'll come together.

Game Mechanics and Worldbuilding

I've realized lately that there's one very critical thing missing from my previous explorations of magic systems. And that is, you need to include growth. It's not interesting if the character(s) know everything there is to know at once. Or even after a short time. There should be a way to grow and learn new things. I've been thinking about this more recently because of a possible new endeavor to amalgamate some of my favorite game systems together, and use my writing world as a base for an RPG. It could be awesome, or it could be terrible. For the moment at least, you all are along for the journey.

Game System
So for the non-gamers among you (which should be all of you, since I don't think I have more than one reader :P), an RPG is loosely broken down into two parts: The Game System, which has all the die mechanics, status changes, etc., and The Setting, which has all the flavor. In most cases, the two are intertwined since we want aspects from the setting to have rules-based effects. However, for the purposes of this discussion, the System is the toolkit which you use to build the Setting. Claro? Awesome.

World of Darkness
So I'm using two systems for the base at the moment. The first one is White Wolf's World of Darkness. Because of copyright laws, I have to be careful how much of this I use (or share, mostly). For those of you who are unfamiliar, I'll say that it's a die pool mechanic, in which you roll a collection of 10-sided die (d10), in order to resolve an action. There are several types of rolls, and one distinction never quite sat well with me. It's a reasonable distinction in most terms, but it gets fuzzy when magic is introduced into the system. This is one of the things I hope this combination will address.

Fate
This system I'm a little more free to discuss in detail, as it's published under an open-source license. The system uses Fudge dice, which are a set of 4 dice, with equal probabilities of being -1,0 or 1. To this a skill can be added, usually between 0 and 5, to resolve an action. Other than that, the system is driven by consumables called Fate points, which allow you to take advantage of various situations. The main thing I am intending to steal from this system is some of the mechanics surrounding Aspects, which trigger the use of Fate points. In addition, the inclusion of zones and barriers for combat (to help determine how easy it is to effect another person), sits well with me.

Combination
I havent' compleately planned through how these will be combined. There are some points that cross over very well, and others which will force some thought. The basic mechanic I think will be the d10 die pool, with the inclusion of aspects. Some aspects will likely be taken from World of Darkness' core mechanics, but I want to include at least 1-2 more in some way.

Setting
In order to continue discussing my plans, we should talk a little bit about what I want out of the setting. This material is none but my own, and so I am freely allowed to share it. (At some point, I should figure out how to discuss the actual copyright of what I post on here, since I've been giving a lot of information about my creative works).

Magic Themes
I planned on discussing this more in a previous post, but somehow I got sidetracked on what I meant by this. In a broad sense, this encompasses the ideas behind the choices I put forward before. The most straightforward examples involve finding cultural mysticism practices, and learning about their themes. Personally, I think the work I'm piecing together encompasses bits of various parts of it.

So what is the place and function of magic in my world(s)? Well, the system I'm putting in place allows for some fluidity in the matter. This is because I've drafted stories which cross the boundaries of several worlds, and so the system I put in place should encompass all of these, and allow for meaningful transitions between them. I'm currently thinking about rating a world on a scale from 1 to 5, though I might redefine the levels if I find more granularity is required. Here are my thoughts as they stand now.

1. No Tech, Highest Magic - This would describe a world in which humans live in more of a semi-symbiotic relationship with magical creatures. The creatures use will, rather than tools, to shape their environment.
2. Primitive Tech, High Magic - This would cover early hunter-gatherer societies. The world would still be inhabited by a plethora of magical creatures, but the abilities of man would be tempered by their tool use.
3.  Medieval Tech, Middle Magic - This is closer to the more traditional fantasy setting. This is roughly the setting for DragonMage.
4. Modern Tech, Low Magic - Modern day times, but still with the insertion of magic.This is roughly the setting for PhoenixFire.
5. Futuristic Tech, Lowest Magic - This is my futuristic setting, and the reason that I'm thinking about turning an RPG out of it. This is roughly the setting for both my short story (title needs work though), and ChaosStorm.

The tradeoff between technology and magic is one I'm particularly attracted to. I think I'll also tie it into the theme I've been messing with of Order vs Chaos. The big question is which side is tech, and which side isn't. Magic as Chaos, and Tech as Order would be more traditional, or at least more expected. It also matches my antagonist better, and therefore the whole plot. However,  on a personal level, I'm more interested in the other direction.

I think this'll do for now, there's some more noodling about, but maybe next week.

Super Secret Sumer Scheme #2

So I've been back and forth what to write about this week. Truth is I haven't made any progress on any of my projects to write about them here, hence the late post.

So instead, I'm going to answer the question that I know some of you have been asking: What was my other super secret summer scheme? The Previous one as you might recall was to amp up physical description by modeling characters in a 3d environment. I've not given up on that, but I need better photos before I can move too much forward.


Anyway, the second project is what I'm here to talk about. So it's been on the todo list for a few months now, possibly earlier. I'm going to try and write a musical. Now I've no reason to believe that it'll be any better than anything else I've written, but it'll be a new experience.

I'm still working on the plot, but I've basically got a guy who's lead a rather unassuming life. He's always taken the safe road, afraid of risk. The scene opens up with his funeral. After he dies, rather than going onto the afterlife, he's sent back down as a guardian angel (I guess more of a conscience, I'm playing off the angel & devil who live on your shoulder), to a guy who is trying too hard to win the girl of his dreams. His counterpart, of course, has his own agenda, thoguh I've not yet figured out what that is.

The only other musical number I've any idea for is a nice sweet song about second chances, which I think may be the theme of the musical. Now I just have to figure out how to tie it all together.

More 3d modeling

Despite the hangup of the past few days, I've still been working a little on the modeling. I downloaded makehuman to get a quick generic mesh to build off of (honestly it's a pretty good mesh, but since it's in so many peices (separate objects, not just groups) i can't really rig it or anything for poses, so I'm still going to revisit that), and have started working on some clothing / accessories. So here's a screenshot:

So it looks pretty good, I'm mostly happy with the design for this particular outfit. I'm still messing with a few ideas, but we'll see. The ovalish thing off to the side is going to become a sword at some point, even though the sword isn't the most appropriate for this character (I'm still working on how to make that work). I'm probably going to make at least 2, if not 3 outfits and a couple poses for the characters, once I get more of the hang of how this all works.


So far, the outfit is just using simple materials to get the colors. I've tried including some textures to add topology, but the bump maps don't seem obvious, at least to me. It might just be a zoom thing, and it might only be at render time, I haven't messed with it much. One of the things I am going to do is add a sigil for the character. I've started designing it, using Alchemy, but I'm not sure how i feel about the overall shape. Still, I'm going to play with it and try and get some more gradient coloring going on once I get home and can review the videos I have on how to do it.

As you can see, the shape isn't great, it's a little strange. It has some promise, but I have to do some thinking before I can include it into the previous work. The colors are also going to be played with, and if I can figure out how, i'd like to get the compositor working on it to make it glow slightly.